Reform of U.S. International Taxation

Reform of U.S.
International Taxation:
Alternatives
Jane G. Gravelle
Senior Specialist in Economic Policy
June 3, 2015
Congressional Research Service

7-5700
www.crs.gov
RL34115
Reform of U.S. International Taxation: Alternatives
Summary
A striking feature of the modern U.S. economy is its growing opennessits increased integration
with the rest of the world. The attention of tax policy makers has recently been focused on the
growing participation of U.S. firms in the international economy and the increased pressure that
engagement places on the U.S. system for taxing overseas business. Is the current U.S. system for
taxing U.S. international business the appropriate one for the modern era of globalized business
operations, or should its basic structure be reformed?
The current U.S. system for taxing international business is a hybrid. In part, the system is based
on a residence principle, applying U.S. taxes on a worldwide basis to U.S. firms while granting
foreign tax credits to alleviate double taxation. The system, however, also permits U.S. firms to
defer foreign-source income indefinitelya feature that approaches a territorial tax jurisdiction.
In keeping with its mixed structure, the system produces a patchwork of economic effects that
depend on the location of foreign investment and the circumstances of the firm. Broadly, the
system poses a tax incentive to invest in countries with low tax rates of their own and a
disincentive to invest in high-tax countries. In theory, U.S. investment should be skewed toward
low-tax countries and away from high-tax locations.
Evaluations of the current tax system vary, and so do prescriptions for reform. According to
traditional economic analysis, world economic welfare is maximized by a system that applies the
same tax burden to prospective (marginal) foreign and domestic investment so that taxes do not
distort investment decisions. Such a system possesses capital export neutrality, and could be
accomplished by worldwide taxation applied to all foreign operations along with an unlimited
foreign tax credit. In contrast, a system that maximizes national welfarea system possessing
national neutralitywould impose a higher tax burden on foreign investment, thus permitting an
overall disincentive for foreign investment. Such a system would impose worldwide taxation but
would permit only a deduction, and not a credit, for foreign taxes.
A tax system based on territorial taxation would exempt overseas business investment from U.S.
tax. In recent years, several proponents of territorial taxation have argued that changes in the
world economy have rendered traditional prescriptions for international taxation obsolete and
instead prescribe territorial taxation as a means of maximizing both world and national economic
welfare. For such a system to be neutral, however, capital would have to be completely immobile
across locations. A case might be made that such a system is less distorting than the current
hybrid system, but it is not clear that it is more likely to achieve policy goals than other reforms,
including not only a movement toward worldwide taxation by ending deferral but also proposals
to provide a minimum tax and restrict deductions for costs associated with deferred income or
restrict deferral and foreign tax credits for tax havens.
Contents
Introduction...................................................................................................................................... 1
The Current System and Possible Revisions ................................................................................... 2
The Systems Structure .............................................................................................................. 2
Possible Revisions ..................................................................................................................... 4
Neutrality, Efficiency, and Competitiveness .................................................................................... 4
Understanding Capital Export Neutrality, Capital Import Neutrality, and National
Neutrality ................................................................................................................................ 5
Capital Ownership Neutrality .................................................................................................... 8
Assessing the Existing Tax System................................................................................................ 11
Territorial Taxation: The Dividend Exemption Proposal ............................................................... 13
A Residence-Based System in Practice.......................................................................................... 16
A Minimum Tax Approach ............................................................................................................ 18
Proposals to Restrict Deferral and Cross-Crediting ....................................................................... 19
Tax Havens: Issues and Policy Options ......................................................................................... 21
General Reforms of the Corporate Tax and Implications for International Tax Treatment ........... 23
Tables
Table 1. Illustration of the Effects of Residence- and Source-Based Taxation ................................ 7
Contacts
Author Contact Information........................................................................................................... 25
Acknowledgments ......................................................................................................................... 26
Introduction
The increasingly global scope of U.S. business has a variety of dimensions. In trade, the overall
level of exports plus imports has risen steadily and substantially in recent decades, increasing
from 16% of U.S. gross domestic product (GDP) in 1976 to 30% of GDP in 2013. Cross-border
investment is growing even more dramatically. In 1976, the ratio of U.S. private assets abroad to
GDP was 0.20; by year-end 2013 the ratio was 1.39.1
The bulk of the increase in outbound investment has been portfolio investmentinvestment in
financial assets such as stocks and bonds without the active conduct of overseas business
operations. But foreign direct investment by U.S. firmsactual foreign production by U.S.owned companieshas increased too, rising from a ratio of 0.12 of GDP to 0.42 of GDP between
1976 and 2013. It is the taxation of U.S. business operations that has been the recent focus of
policy makers and that has raised the question of basic tax reform in the international sector: Is
the current U.S. system for taxing U.S. international business appropriate in this age of globalized
business operations, or is reform needed?2 Moreover, along with the increasing scope of
international investment activities, there is a growing opportunity for tax shelters that take
advantage of low-tax foreign jurisdictions. How might revisions in the tax system exacerbate or
address these tax shelter issues?
The current U.S. system is a hybrid construct, embodying a mix of opposing jurisdictional
principles. Not surprisingly, the mixed systemin conjunction with foreign host-country taxes
poses a patchwork of incentive effects for U.S. firms and their global operations, in some cases
taxing foreign operations favorably and creating an incentive to invest abroad, and in other cases
imposing high tax burdens and posing a disincentive to overseas investment. In still other cases,
the system presents a rough tax neutrality toward overseas investment. It is perhaps the hybrid
nature of the system that has led to calls for reform. Prescriptions for a good tax system vary,
and the hybrid system satisfies none of them fully.
This report describes and assesses the principal prescriptions that have been offered for broad
reform of the international system. It begins with an overview of current law and possible
revisions. It then sets the framework for considering economic efficiency as well as tax shelter
activities. Finally, it reviews alternative approaches to revision in light of those issues.
1
Data on trade, U.S. assets abroad, and foreign assets in the United States are from the website of the U.S. Department
of Commerce, Bureau of Economic Analysis, at http://www.bea.gov.
2
International tax reform has been of interest for many years. The current tax reform drive might be dated from
President Bushs executive order (E.O. 13369) establishing his advisory panel on tax reform, which cited international
competitiveness concerns as one principal reason for considering tax reform. The panels final report included a
fundamental change in the structure of the U.S. international system as part of one of its reform options. See Presidents
Advisory Panel on Federal Tax Reform, Simple, Fair, and Pro-Growth: Proposals to Fix Americas Tax System,
Washington, DC, November 2005. Also, beginning in 2005, Senator Ron Wyden (now chairman of the Senate Finance
Committee) introduced the first of several tax reform bills that included important international elements (from the
109th Congress through the 112th, S. 1927, S. 1111, S. 3018, and S. 727). Subsequently, the Presidents Bipartisan
Fiscal Commission (informally known as the Simpson-Bowles Commission) in February 2010 proposed a general
outline of tax reform and specified international tax revisions. See National Fiscal Commission on Fiscal Responsibility
and Reform, The Moment of Truth, The White House, December 2010, http://www.fiscalcommission.gov/sites/
fiscalcommission.gov/files/documents/TheMomentofTruth12_1_2010.pdf. Most recently, the 2014 proposal by Ways
and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp, the Tax Reform Act of 2014 (H.R. 1), included a major change in the
international corporate tax system.
The Current System and Possible Revisions

The Systems Structure
There are two alternative, conceptually pure, principles on which countries base their tax in the
international setting: residence and territory. Under a residence system, a country taxes its own
residents (or domestically chartered resident corporations) on their worldwide income, regardless
of that incomes geographic source. Under a territorial or source-based system, a country taxes
only income that is earned within its own borders.
In practice, no country uses a pure residence-based tax; historically, virtually all countries tax
income foreign investors earn within their borders (although they may grant tax holidays in some
cases as an inducement to investment). Many countries, however, have a territorial or sourcebased tax (although they may tax some foreign-source income under anti-abuse rules).3 The
United States uses a system that taxes both income of foreign firms earned within its borders and
the worldwide income of U.S.-chartered firms.
Despite these nominal residence features, however, U.S. taxes do not apply to the foreign income
of U.S.-owned corporations chartered abroad. As a result, a U.S. firm can indefinitely defer U.S.
tax on its foreign income if it conducts its foreign operations through a foreign-chartered
subsidiary corporation; U.S. taxes do not apply as long as the foreign subsidiarys income is
reinvested overseas. With some exceptions, U.S. taxes apply only when the income is remitted to
the U.S.-resident parent as dividends or other intra-firm payments such as interest and royalties.
The deferral feature reduces the effective U.S. tax burden on foreign income and imparts an
element of territoriality to the system. It also results in a dichotomous structure for taxing
overseas business income: deferral in the case of foreign-subsidiary income and current taxation
in the case of branches of U.S. chartered corporations. The bulk of active business investment by
U.S. firms is through foreign-chartered subsidiaries.4
Of the 34 member nations of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), 28 have some
version of a territorial tax by treaty or statute. The territorial countries are Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Czech
Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg,
Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, and
the United Kingdom. Many countries that have some version of a territorial tax restrict their exemption of foreignsource income in some way. For example, Poland and Greece apply territorial treatment only to subsidiaries in the
European Union. The following countries taxed foreign-source income and rely on foreign tax credits to relieve double
taxation: Chile, Ireland, Israel, Korea, Mexico, and the United States. Many countries that have some version of a
territorial tax restrict their exemption of foreign-source income in some way. See PriceWaterhouseCoopers, Evolution
of Territorial Tax Systems in the OECD, at http://www.techceocouncil.org/clientuploads/reports/
Report%20on%20Territorial%20Tax%20Systems_20130402b.pdf. In a list of the territorial and worldwide tax systems
of the 50 largest economies, 20 had worldwide systems, 26 had territorial systems, and 4 were unspecified. Of large
countries outside the OECD, China, Brazil, and India had worldwide systems and Russia had a territorial system. This
source lists Poland as a worldwide system and Israel as a territorial one. See Ernst and Young, Corporate Income tax
(CIT) rates Corporate Income Tax (CIT) Rates: Largest 50 Economies or Jurisdictions by GDP, Sorted by Tax
Rate, http://www.ey.com/GL/en/Services/Tax/Tax-policy-and-controversy/TPC-BriefingCorporate-income-tax
CITrates.
4
According to Internal Revenue Service (IRS) data for 2010, before-tax earnings and profits of foreign subsidiaries
were $818 billion whereas branch gross income was $150 billion. The data are posted on the IRS website at
http://www.irs.gov/uac/SOI-Tax-Stats-Corporate-Foreign-Tax-Credit-Statistics.
Along with deferral, another basic feature of the U.S. system is the foreign tax credit. The United
States taxes worldwide income on either a current or deferred basis, but it also allows credits for
foreign taxes paid on a dollar-for-dollar basis against U.S. taxes otherwise owed.5 This treatment
avoids the double taxation that would otherwise apply and concedes the first right of taxation to
the country of source. In effect, the United States gives the foreign host country the first
opportunity to tax the income and collects only what tax is left (up to its own rate) after the
foreign host country collects its share.
When the foreign tax is higher than the U.S. tax, the credit is limited to the U.S. tax that would be
due on the foreign income. The purpose of the limit is to protect the U.S. domestic tax base
without it, foreign countries could impose very high taxes without discouraging inbound U.S.
investment because the cost of the higher taxes would be shifted to the U.S. Treasury. With the
limitation, if foreign taxes exceed the U.S. tax that would be due, the excess foreign taxes cannot
be credited. Foreign tax credits that exceed this limitation are termed excess credits. Currently,
foreign tax credits are allowed on what is sometimes termed an overall basis, so that income and
tax credits from all countries are combined. This treatment allows for cross-crediting, in which
credits paid in excess of U.S. tax in one country may be used to offset U.S. tax in a country in
which the foreign tax is lower than the U.S. tax. To prevent abuse, tax credits are divided into
baskets that separate passive income easily shifted to low-tax countries. Currently, two baskets
exist, one for active income and one for passive income. More than half of foreign-source active
business income is earned by firms with overall excess credits.6
Cross-crediting can also occur across types of income. For example, royalties are subject to
current U.S. taxes and are generally deductible by firms in foreign jurisdictions, but they are
considered foreign-source income. As a result, they are shielded from tax in many cases by excess
credits.
To address tax avoidance by shifting passive income into low-tax jurisdictions, Subpart F restricts
the applicability of deferral in some situations. Subpart F provides that U.S. stockholders (e.g.,
parent firms) of foreign corporations are subject to current U.S. tax on certain types of subsidiary
income, whether or not the income is repatriated. Only stockholders owning at least 10% of
subsidiary stock and only subsidiaries that are at least 50% owned by 10% U.S. stockholders are
subject to Subpart F. Countries that have territorial tax systems generally also have some type of
anti-abuse provision to protect their tax bases.
Tax deferral results in heightened importance for the systems rules for dividing income between
related firms; the more income a firm can assign, for tax purposes, to a foreign subsidiary in a
low-tax country, the lower its overall tax burden. The current system generally requires firms to
set hypothetical transfer prices, which are required to approximate the prices two firms would
5
U.S. parent firms are permitted to claim foreign tax credits for foreign taxes paid by their foreign-chartered
subsidiaries. Such indirect credits can be claimed by the parent when the foreign-source income is remitted as
dividends.
6
Jennifer Gravelle reports 62% of income in 2008 was earned by firms with excess credits in at least one basket. See
Who Will Benefit from a Territorial Tax: Characteristics of Multinational Firms, NTA Proceedings from the 105th
Annual Conference in Providence, RI, 2012, http://www.ntanet.org/images/stories/pdf/proceedings/12/15_gravelle.pdf.
Similar shares were found in the past. See Rosanne Altshuler and Harry Grubert, Corporate Taxes in the World
Economy: Reforming the Taxation of Cross-Border Income, in Fundamental Tax Reform: Issues, Choices and
Implications, Ed. John W. Diamond and George R. Zodrow (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2008).
agree on if they conducted their transactions at arms length. The system is complex and difficult
to administer.
The foreign tax credits limitation also places pressure on the systems rules for determining the
source of income (sourcing rules). Because firms can only credit foreign taxes against the portion
of taxable income attributable to foreign sources, taxpayers must assign both revenue and costs to
either domestic or foreign sources. Although the tax code contains rules for making such
allocations, they are likewise complex and difficult to administer.
In sum, the United States taxes its resident corporations on their worldwide income but permits
indefinite deferral of active business income earned through foreign subsidiaries. Where U.S.
taxes apply, foreign tax credits alleviate double taxation but are limited to offsetting U.S. tax on
foreign income. Subpart F is designed to deny deferral to what is generally passive income.
Possible Revisions
Because the current U.S. tax system is a mix of a worldwide system and a territorial system, the
fundamental tax reform issue is whether moving toward either pure systema territorial or
worldwide residence-based regimewould be an improvement. Moving toward a territorial
system would involve permanently exempting most foreign-source active business income. (Most
territorial proposals, however, would continue taxing passive income, as under current laws
Subpart F.) Moving toward a worldwide tax would eliminate the deferral benefit and might also
entail further restricting cross-crediting by increasing the number of baskets for the foreign tax
credit limit. Some revisions that maintain the current system but tighten the rules for deductions
include proposals to disallow certain deductions of the parent company (such as interest) that
reflect the share of income that is deferred.
The report defers discussion of the precise changes fundamental reform would entail. First,
however, it explains the tools economists have developed for evaluating the various international
tax systems.
Neutrality, Efficiency, and Competitiveness

The term competitiveness has often been invoked in the debate about U.S. policy in a global
economy, including discussions of U.S. tax policy.7 In economic analysis, however, it is not
countries that are competitive; it is companies that are. A company generally thinks of itself as
competitive if it can produce at the same cost as, or a lower cost than, other firms. But a countrys
firms cannot be competitive in all areas. Indeed, even if firms in a country are more productive
than firms in all other countries in every respect, a country would still tend to produce those
goods in which its relative advantage is greatest. The other countries need to produce goods with
their resources as well. This notion is called comparative advantage, and it is an important
concept in economic theory.8
7
For a more detailed discussion of this concept see CRS Report RS22445, Taxes and International Competitiveness, by
Donald J. Marples. See also Jane G. Gravelle, Does the Concept of Competitiveness Have Meaning in Formulating
Corporate Tax Policy? Tax Law Review, vol. 65, no. 3, 2012, p. 323-348.
8
Comparative advantage is not a technical or unfamiliar concept; it is a common, everyday occurrence. A lawyer may
(continued...)
When discussing national policy, including tax policy and its effect on the international allocation
of capital, the issues are generally framed around questions of efficiency, neutrality, and optimal
policies rather than notions of competitiveness. These terms can mean the same thing, or they can
be slightly different. Neutrality generally refers to provisions that do not alter the allocation of
investment from that which would occur without taxes. When markets are operating efficiently, a
neutral tax policy will also be an efficient policy because it will maintain the efficient allocation
that would occur without taxes. Moreover, even when the market is imperfect, neutrality may still
be the policy most likely to be efficient, given the difficulty in identifying and measuring market
imperfections.
Optimal policy differs from efficiency in that it usually refers to a particular agent or actor
choosing a policy that maximizes his or her own welfare. A country can also choose a policy that
leads to the greatest welfare for its own citizens, even if that policy distorts the allocation of
capital (is not neutral) and leads to less efficient worldwide production. The optimal policy from
the perspective of a country, in other words, may not be the most efficient in terms of the
worldwide allocation of capital, and it may not be the optimal policy from the perspective of
world economic welfare.
Economists have traditionally used three concepts to evaluate tax rules that apply to outbound
investment. These concepts are referred to as neutrality concepts, although, as shown below, they
are not always neutral in the sense of not distorting the allocation of investment. The concepts are
capital export neutrality, capital import neutrality, and national neutrality. To evaluate the
consequences of any multinational tax reform, it is crucial to understand these concepts, whether
they are valid, and what they imply for policy. The concepts were developed when virtually all
foreign investment took place as direct investment of multinational companies; virtually no
foreign portfolio investment (ownership of foreign stock by U.S. citizens) existed. The growth in
this portfolio investment has led to a new neutrality concept, referred to as capital ownership
neutrality. These traditional and new concepts are addressed in turn.
Understanding Capital Export Neutrality, Capital Import

Neutrality, and National Neutrality
Capital export neutrality requires a country to apply the same tax rate to its firms investments,
regardless of where they are located, and is embodied in a residence-based tax system. Capital
import neutrality requires the same tax on firms with different nationalities that invest in a given
location and is embodied in a territorial or source-based tax. National neutrality requires that the
nations total return on investment, including both that nations taxes and its firms profits, is
equal in each jurisdiction, foreign and domestic. This form of neutrality is obtained by taxing
foreign-source income and allowing a deduction for foreign taxes.
Some of these neutrality rules may also be rules for optimization. National neutrality is often
described as optimal, but that outcome is only the case with perfectly mobile capital and no
(...continued)
be able to do his or her paralegal employees work more efficiently, but that activity is not the best use of his or her
time. A lawyer has an absolute advantage in both law practice and paralegal work but a comparative advantage in
practicing law.
retaliation by foreign countries. There is also an optimizing rule for choosing the tax rate on
inbound investment, which depends on how responsive that investment inflow is to the return.
Evaluating policy, discussed subsequently, is complicated because although some countries have
territorial or source-based taxes, no country imposes a pure residence-based tax. Worldwide
taxation as practiced in the United States and other countries has some attributes of a residencebased tax, but it is a mixture of residence- and source-based tax. Tax is imposed on foreign firms
operating within the United States, a source-based attribute. On outbound investment, the
application of tax to repatriated income creates some resemblance to residence tax, but the
foreign tax credit limitations cause it to depart from such a tax, and deferral provisions introduce
an element of a source-based tax.
Because these concepts are so frequently misunderstood, it is useful to employ a simple
illustrative example to explain them with the pure tax systems that are consistent with capital
export neutrality and capital import neutrality. In these simple systems, national neutrality is the
same as capital export neutrality. Its nuances will be discussed in the following section, in which
more realistic tax systems are discussed. In this instance, it may be helpful to demonstrate the
difference between residence-based and source-based taxes in achieving economic neutrality.
Consider a world beginning with no taxes and assume that capital is perfectly substitutable across
countries, implying that a firm will earn the same after-tax return in each location. The return is
10%. There are three countries: a high-tax country that imposes a 50% tax rate, a low-tax country
that imposes a 25% tax rate, and a zero-tax country. All investment is made through the
companies direct operations, so there is no substitution of capital across firms and the capital
owned by each country is fixed. The high- and low-tax countries have capital that can be used to
invest in their own country or in the other two countries. To simplify, the zero-tax country is
assumed to have only labor and no capital.
Table 1 shows the return to firms in the absence of any tax and with the two tax systems in place
but before investment has shifted (which would alter the pretax return). Residence taxation,
which produces capital export neutrality, has no effect on the allocation of investment by either
countrys firms because each firm still earns the same return in each location. Source-based
taxation, however, will result in higher returns in the zero- and, to a lesser extent, low-tax
countries. As a result, capital will flow out of the high-tax country, raising its return and lowering
the wages of the workers in that country, and into the zero-tax country, lowering its return and
raising the wages of the workers in that country. The effect on the low-tax country depends on the
size of that country and its labor force relative to the rest of the world. In addition to the effects
on the return to capital and wages, output is produced inefficiently, which reduces world welfare.
Table 1. Illustration of the Effects of Residence- and Source-Based Taxation

Return by Location of Investment (%)
High-Tax
Country
Low-Tax
Country
Zero-Tax
Country
High-Tax Country
10%
10%
10%
Low-Tax Country
10%
10%
10%
High-Tax Country
5%
5%
5%
Low-Tax Country
7.5%
7.5%
7.5%
High-Tax Country
5%
7.5%
10%
Low-Tax Country
5%
7.5%
10%
Nationality of Firm
No Taxes
Residence Tax
Source-Based (Territorial) Tax
Source: Compiled by the Congressional Research Service.

Note: The high-tax country has a 50% tax rate, whereas the low-tax country has a 25% tax rate.
Table 1 can also be used to show that the residence-based system is consistent with national
neutrality but the source-based system is not. For the high-tax country, in each location it earns
5% in tax revenue and 5% in profits (for a total of 10%). Thus, the total return to the nation is
equated in each jurisdiction. The same is true of the low-tax country, although the total return is
split into 2.5% taxes and 7.5% profits. The source-based system does not meet that standard.
Even before investment shifts, the high-tax country, while earning 10% domestically and in the
zero-tax country, is earning only 7.5% in the low-tax country, because that countrys government
is collecting the tax. The same is true of the low-tax country with respect to investment taxed by
the high-tax country.
National neutrality departs from capital export neutrality in the more complex, real-world
circumstances. It, in fact, requires that foreign-source income be taxed and that any taxes imposed
by the country of location be deducted (rather than the current rule of some countries, including
the United States, that allow taxes to be credited). If foreign countries impose taxes, national
neutrality does not lead to worldwide neutrality because foreign investment is discouraged in
countries that impose taxes.
National neutrality is really about optimal policy, which maximizes the welfare of the countrys
residents. It is an optimal policy if all capital is perfectly mobile; if not, it is actually optimal for a
country to impose even more tax on outbound investment than is suggested by the neutrality
standard.
In sum, according to these long-standing measures of neutrality and efficiency, capital export
neutrality is appropriate for maximizing world output, national neutrality is appropriate for
maximizing a nations welfare, and capital import neutrality is not neutral at all.
Capital Ownership Neutrality

A new concept of neutrality has appeared in recent years. The term capital ownership neutrality
(CON) is closely associated with Desai and Hines, professors, respectively, of business at
Harvard and economics at the University of Michigan.9 The term itself, however, appears to have
been coined by Michael Devereux,10 a British economist. The underlying justification for the new
standards development, the growth of portfolio investment, was also discussed independently
about the same time in a paper by Frisch.11 Essentially, capital ownership neutrality is the same as
capital import neutrality in that, under certain very restrictive assumptions, it is achieved by
source-based taxation. Some of the earlier discussions viewed it as a resurrection of capital
import neutrality.12
The issue of ownership neutrality developed because international investment markets changed.
At the time the previous notions of neutral international tax systems were first developed
generally, the early 1960svirtually all U.S. investment abroad was carried out through foreign
direct investment by U.S. firms.13 U.S. portfolio investors held almost no stock in foreign firms.
Until the mid-1980s, the share of foreign stocks in U.S. residents stock portfolios was less than
1%. Thus, it was reasonable to assume, as in the discussion above, that there was no substitution
across the nationality of firms but rather only across locationsthat is, U.S. investors could not
substitute investment abroad through foreign firms for investment in U.S. firms with foreign
operations. Over time, however, the share of foreign stock in U.S. residents portfolios increased.
By the end of 2006, before the recession, it was 22%. By the end of 2013, it was 18%, although
that fall may have reflected the rest of the worlds slower recovery from the recession.14 This
overall increase did not occur smoothly: it rose in the latter part of the mid-1980s to about 6%,
leveled out for a number of years, then again increased around 1993 and 1994 to about 11%,
where it stayed until around 2001 and then rose again.
A closer look at the CON concept indicates that, to make the argument that capital ownership
neutrality (and therefore source-based taxation) should be the guiding principle for an efficient
and neutral tax system, three requirements are needed. First, firms are assumed not to substitute
operations in one location for those in anothercapital is completely immobile across locations.
Second, firms must differ in their productivitythat is, some firms are more efficient than
9
Mihir Desai and James Hines, Evaluating International Tax Reform, National Tax Journal, vol. 56, September 2003.
Michael P. Devereux, Capital Export Neutrality, Capital Import Neutrality, Capital Ownership Neutrality, and All
That, Unpublished Paper, June 11, 1990.
11
Daniel J. Frisch, The Economics of International Tax Policy: Some Old and New Approaches, Tax Notes, April 30,
1990.
12
Frisch, in The Economics of International Tax Policy: Some Old and New Approaches, states, In short, a major
element of the CIN view would seem to possess a grain of truth, (p. 590) referring to the capital import neutrality
framework. Devereux, in Capital Export Neutrality, Capital Import Neutrality, Capital Ownership Neutrality, and All
That, indicated that he originally attempted to redefine capital import neutrality to cover the capital ownership
neutrality concept.
13
The concepts were first developed by Peggy Musgrave. See, for example, her United States Taxation of Foreign
Investment Income: Issues and Arguments (Cambridge MA: Harvard Law School, 1969), pp. 108-121.
14
Calculated by reducing U.S. corporate equity issues by foreign stock holdings in the United States determining U.S.
holdings of foreign stocks as a share. Data on corporate equities can be found in the Board of Governors of the Federal
Reserve Flow of Funds Accounts, Table L213, which can be found at http://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/Z1/
Current/. Historical series can also be found in the National Income and Product Accounts at http://www.bea.gov/
national/nipaweb/Ni_FedBeaSna/TableView.asp?SelectedTable=5&FirstYear=1998&LastYear=2005&Freq=Year.
10
othersand there must be substitution across portfolios that results in firms being shut out of
lines of business that they could run more efficiently. Third, there must be no mechanisms
available to obtain the benefits of productive efficiencyshort of owning the productive capital
assets. For example, relatively inefficient firms cannot rent efficient technologies or hire efficient
managers away from efficient firms.
If only the first requirement is met (immobility across locations), any system of taxing investment
abroad would be neutral because the particular distortionallocation of investment across
locationsis simply assumed away. It does not matter if overseas operations are taxed higher or
lower than domestic investment, because investment has no reason to move. Residence taxation
would be efficient as well as source-based taxation, because the national affiliation of firms
would not matter to productivity (although residence taxation would not be optimal for the hightax country that would have no revenues).15
If the two remaining assumptions also applyproductivity differs and no mechanisms exist to
boost efficiencyit can be shown that residence-based taxation is inefficient whereas sourcebased taxation produces efficiency. For example, returning to Table 1, suppose some firms in
each country are particularly productive and can earn 12% before tax rather than 10%. With
residence-based taxation, the after-tax return of the high-tax countrys productive firms, which
would yield an after-tax return of 6%, would not be enough for these firms to operate and, if the
only way to realize the higher return is to own the capital, the higher pretax yields of these more
efficient firms would not be realized. With source-based taxation, the efficient firms in each
country would operate and displace the less efficient ones.
In the more realistic tax systems in which countries also tax capital income in their own locations,
the high-tax countrys especially productive firms would still operate in their own country. That
is, by taxing income within its borders, a high-tax country that is attempting to practice capital
export neutrality with a worldwide tax still faces neutral ground in its home country. Thus, any
distortion arising in practice from the current system would involve foreign firms and the solution
of exempting foreign-source income from tax is the solution consistent with capital ownership
neutrality.
Consider each of the restrictions in turn. The first is the assumption that capital is immobile
across locations; as noted above, there is considerable evidence that it is not and, indeed, that it is
quite elastic. So at best, it would be a question of picking which type of distortion is worse. As
long as capital is mobile across jurisdictions, capital ownership neutrality is not neutral. At most,
the model shows that there is no way to achieve neutrality and that one is in a second-best world.
The second restriction requires a high, perhaps perfect, degree of substitution in portfolios of
different types of stocks that would lead to the exclusion of stock of high-tax countries. There is
considerable evidence to suggest that such perfect substitution is not the case. It has long been
known that there is a significant home bias in the holding of both portfolio and direct assets.
Despite global securities markets, American residents continue to hold 80% of their stock
portfolios in stock of U.S. firms. If portfolio investment were perfectly substitutable, the U.S.
share would be expected to be closer to the share of total assets. The U.S. accounts for about a
15
This optimality issue has also been addressed with the notion of National Ownership Neutrality, which indicates that
it is both efficient and optimal to have source-based taxation.
third of total fixed investment of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development
(OECD) countries.16
The fact that the share of foreign stocks in the portfolios of U.S. residents has grown does not in
itself provide evidence of a significant elasticity; rather, it may reflect a variety of technical and
institutional changes that make holding foreign stocks more feasible or more likely. Moreover, the
portfolio shares are consistent with the notion that the holdings that do exist are not due so much
to tax differences as to a general desire to diversify assets across countries to reduce cyclical risk.
Prior to the recession, two-thirds of investment in foreign equities by U.S. residents was in other
countries with similar tax rates. At the end of 2006, the two largest shares of total foreign equities
in U.S. residents portfolios were for the United Kingdom (16%) and Japan (15%). The UK, with
a 30% corporate rate, had a lower statutory rate than the United States (39% including state
taxes), but Japan had a rate of 41%. Although both rates subsequently fell relative to U.S. rates,
the UK share remained about the same at the end of 2013, whereas the share for Japan fell to 9%.
The next two largest claimants in 2006 (Canada and France, with 7% and 6%, respectively) had
tax rates of 35% each. These shares were similar at the end of 2013 (6% and 5%). Canadas tax
rate had declined, but Frances was unchanged.17 There were significant shares in two tax havens
in 2006, Bermuda (5%) and the Cayman Islands (3%). According to the 2006 Department of
Treasury report, however, the Bermuda investments are largely former U.S. firms that have
moved their locations to avoid U.S. tax (a phenomenon called inversion that was subsequently
addressed with legislative restrictions) and the Cayman Islands investments are in offshore
financial centers (again, likely a tax-avoidance issue rather than a direct-production issue).18 The
share in Bermuda declined to 3% at the end of 2013, but the Cayman Islands share rose to 10%,
apparently because of the addition of new survey respondents. The Cayman Islands was also an
inversion location.
An imperfect portfolio substitution elasticity also suggests that the phenomenon of eliminating
efficient firms is less likely to happen. Especially productive and efficient firms will earn higher
returns than other firms in similar circumstances of nationality and location, and they would be
expected to be retained in both domestic and foreign investors portfolios. Any firms whose size
is contracted by portfolio shifts due to tax rates are more likely to be the marginal firms that have
a normal level of productivity.
Finally, this model assumes there are no other ways to enjoy the additional productivity of more
efficient firms. In effect, the model begins with the assumption of productive advantages without
defining in formal termsso that the effects can be modeledthe source of the productivity.
For example, if the greater productivity of the firm is due to the employment of managers with
greater skills, then that productivity arises at a cost, and these management skills embodied in the
individuals resident in a given country should be free to move to their highest use and allocated
efficiently. Because they add a surplus value, they would not be driven out of the market, and
16
Congressional Budget Office, Corporate Tax Rates: International Comparisons, November, 2005.
Data are from tax rates cited in Congressional Budget Office. Corporate Tax Rates: International Comparisons,
Washington, DC, November 2005, http://www.cbo.gov/publication/17501, and portfolio share data are from U.S,
Department of Treasury, Report on U.S. Portfolio Holdings of Foreign Securities, Washington, DC, 2013.
http://www.treasury.gov/ticdata/Publish/shc2013_report.pdf.
18
U.S. Department of Treasury, Report on U.S. Portfolio Holdings of Foreign Securities.
17
10
worldwide efficiency requires a capital export neutrality approach to labor resources as well as
capital.
If the asset is uniquely tied to the firmsuch as a value through a trademark, intangible research
and development, or even a management set-upthe model does not allow for the fact that
ownership of the productive assets and ownership of the intangible asset can, in most cases, be
separated. Trademarks and patents can be franchised and sold. Or, if the intangible cannot be
separately sold (for example, if the research and development could be easily copied and thus is
not patented but kept secret), there are ways for the firm to operate without ownership of the
capital assets, such as factories, machinery, and equipment that give rise to normal products.
These assets could be leased by the firm with the intangible asset. Moreover, if the asset is not
closely tied to management, the firm could arrange for contract manufacturing, a technique
commonly used to shift profits. These techniques may be less than perfect if there are principalagent costs,19 but this effect is of questionable importance.
In light of the many ways in which the efficiency costs of capital ownership non-neutrality are
unlikely to be significant compared to location distortions, it seems questionable to use meeting
this standard of neutrality to evaluate tax reform changes and questionable to see source-based
taxation as an efficient international tax regime.
Assessing the Existing Tax System

The above examples illustrate the various traditional concepts of neutrality and how they are
embodied in basic tax structures. However, as described at the reports outset, the U.S. tax system
is a hybridneither a pure territorial- or residence-based system. Accordingly, it presents a
patchwork of incentive effects, sometimes posing an incentive to invest abroad and, in other
situations, presenting either a disincentive or tax neutrality. This section looks at the existing
systems principal incentive effects.
First, in some cases the U.S. system resembles residence-based taxationit taxes foreign branch
income on a current basis while allowing a foreign tax credit. Even where current taxation
applies, however, the U.S. system departs from pure residence taxation by placing a limit on its
foreign tax credit. If pure residence-based taxation means taxing income of residents at the same
rate, regardless of where it is earned, an unlimited foreign tax credit would be required. Under
such a credit, when the foreign tax is lower than the home country tax, the home country would
collect a residual, equating the total tax imposed to that on its domestic investment. When the
foreign countrys tax is higher, the home country would have to refund the excess so that, again,
the tax on the foreign investment would be the same as the tax on domestic investment. In
practice, however, an unlimited foreign tax credit is not feasible because of its potential threat to
the home country tax base (here, that of the United States). Without a limit, countries host to
foreign investment could simply raise their taxes on inbound investment without limit and
without fear of driving foreign investors away. The foreign investors could simply credit their
high foreign taxes against their home country tax bill. The United States thus limits its foreign tax
credit to offsetting U.S. taxes on foreign (and not domestic) income.
19
Principal-agent costs occur when the objectives of the two parties are not identical. For example, the contract
manufacturer (the agent) may want to increase the scale of the operation rather than maximizing profits for the firm
authorizing the manufacturing (the principal).
11
The incentive effects of a worldwide system with a limited credit depend on exactly how the
credit is limited. If the limit applies separately for each country (a per-country limit), the system
would achieve neutrality on outbound investment with respect to low tax-rate countries but not
high tax-rate countries. If taxes can be averaged across countriesthat is, if a firm calculates a
single limit aggregated across countriesthe neutrality consequences are less clear. In that case,
the excess credits from the investment in a high-tax country can be used to offset tax due on
investments in the low-tax country (can be cross-credited). For example, assume profits were
$100 in a high-tax location with a 50% rate and $100 in the zero-tax location, with the home
country tax rate 25%. With no cross-crediting, a firm from the 25% tax rate country uses the
foreign tax of $50 to wipe out the home country tax of $25, with only the tax of $50 applying,
while the firm would pay a home country tax of $25 on the income earned in the zero-tax
jurisdiction. The total tax is $75. With cross-crediting, the total foreign-source income is $200,
the total foreign tax paid is $50 (in the high-tax country, on $100 of profit), and the total homecountry tax due is also $50 (25% of $200 of income in both countries). All foreign tax is credited
and the total tax is $50.
Cross-crediting, as allowed in the U.S. tax system, can therefore reduce the disincentive to invest
in high-tax countries if the firm already has investment in the zero-tax country because the excess
credits have a value. Similarly, it can increase the incentive to invest in the zero-tax country if the
firm already has investment in the high-tax country because excess credits can effectively remove
any residual tax in the zero-tax country. In either case, foreign investment is encouraged relative
to domestic investment. In practice, the U.S. tax system permits extensive cross-crediting; it does
not require a per-country limitation, although it does require firms to calculate separate limits for
passive and active business income.
Second, the U.S. tax system departs from residence-based taxation in its use of deferral. As
described above, U.S. taxes generally do not apply to the foreign business income of foreignchartered subsidiaries. This feature of the tax system introduces elements of a territorial or
source-based taxation into the system, and it also introduces a distortion in firms decisions of
whether to return profits to the United States or reinvest them abroad. Moreover, the interaction
of deferral with cross-crediting provides some scope for firms to choose the times and places of
repatriation to minimize tax liability. In general, the availability of deferrallike the territorial
taxation it at least approachesposes an incentive for U.S. firms to invest in low-tax countries. In
addition, once capital has been invested abroad, the provision encourages firms to retain their
earnings overseas rather than returning them to the United States.20
This mixture of treatments also provides methods for avoiding tax apart from the direct effects on
investment allocation. Deferral provides an incentive to artificially shift profits to low-tax
jurisdictions. Because firms can choose between branch operations and investment via foreignchartered subsidiaries, they can use a branch form when operations are starting up and typically
lose money to allow losses to be deducted from the U.S. worldwide income tax and then shift to a
subsidiary form when the operation becomes profitable.
20
Some theories suggest that firms do not change their retentions in the steady state and the current buildup of earnings
abroad is due to the possibility of a tax holiday, similar to the provision adopted in 2004 to allow a one-time exclusion
of 85% of additional repatriations (payment of dividends to the parent). See CRS Report R42624, Moving to a
Territorial Income Tax: Options and Challenges, by Jane G. Gravelle for a discussion of the issues surrounding the
effect of taxes on repatriations.
12
In sum, the current system poses a patchwork of incentive effects that is in keeping with its
hybrid nature. Where current taxation appliesfor example, to branch incomethere is a
disincentive to invest in high-tax countries and either an incentive or neutrality toward investment
in low-tax countries, depending on whether the investing firm can use cross-crediting of foreign
taxes. Where deferral is available, the system poses an incentive to invest in low-tax countries. It
also provides mechanisms for artificially sheltering income from tax.
Territorial Taxation: The Dividend

Exemption Proposal
The preceding sections showed why the theoretical argument that territorial taxation is optimal is
difficult to defend.21 Some have argued, however, that although territorial taxation may not be the
most efficient system in a perfect world, it is nonetheless superior to the hybrid, patchwork
system that is the current U.S. systema second-best argument.
To understand this argument for territorial taxation, it is helpful to examine the specific version
proposed in a 2001 American Enterprise Institute monograph by economists Harry Grubert and
John Mutti. Until the recent proposals for a territorial tax by Ways and Means Committee
Chairman Camp and Senator Enzi, the proposal that was discussed over the years was the
Grubert-Mutti proposal. In 2005, President Bushs advisory commission on tax reform set forth a
similar plan.22 More recently, the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform
proposed a territorial tax, although it did not provide specific details.23 It is useful to discuss the
Grubert-Mutti plan first and then address how the two more recent proposals differed from it.24
Grubert and Mutti described their proposal as a dividend exemption system, thus focusing on
the chief modification their plan would make to the current regime: it would exempt from U.S.
taxes dividends repatriated to U.S. parents from foreign subsidiary corporations, thus moving
from current laws deferral for foreign income to a permanent exemption. More generally, an
exemption system can be viewed as a territorial tax system whose application is restricted to
active business investment abroad but that continues to tax portfolio investment of firms (such as
interest, royalties, and similar income) on a current basis.
Several additional features of the plan are important to the advantages it might have over the
current system. First, the plan would not permit foreign tax credits to be claimed for foreign taxes
paid with respect to repatriated earnings. The repatriations, after all, would be exempt from U.S.
tax, thus obviating the need for relief from double taxation. Second, deductions allocable to taxexempt foreign-source income would be disallowed. Here, the reasoning is that the purpose of
21
See CRS Report R42624, Moving to a Territorial Income Tax: Options and Challenges, by Jane G. Gravelle for a
more extensive discussion of a territorial tax and a comparison of the details of various territorial tax proposals.
22
Harry Grubert and John Mutti, Taxing International Business Income: Dividend Exemption versus the Current
System (Washington: American Enterprise Institute, 2001), 67 pp; Presidents Advisory Panel on Tax Reform, Simple,
Fair, and Pro-Growth: Proposals to Fix Americas Tax System (Washington, 1985), pp. 239-244.
23
National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, The Moment of Truth, Washington, DC, The White
House, December 2010.
24
The Grubert Mutti proposal as well as proposals in a Ways and Means Committee discussion draft and the bill
Senator Enzi introduced in the 112th Congress are described in CRS Report R42624, Moving to a Territorial Income
Tax: Options and Challenges, by Jane G. Gravelle.
13
deductions is to remove items of cost from the tax base; because overseas income would no
longer be in the U.S. tax base, removal of associated costs would not be necessary. Importantly,
this would mean that a portion of debt incurred by a U.S. parent corporation would not be
deductiblethe portion assumed to be used in financing tax-exempt foreign subsidiaries. This
limitation on deductions would also apply to other overhead expenses, including research and
development costs.
As described in the preceding sections, the capital import neutrality and capital ownership
neutrality standards both recommend adoption of territorial taxation, but traditional economic
theory is skeptical of the theoretical justification of the two standards. Grubert and Mutti argue,
however, that even if capital import neutrality and capital ownership neutrality are rejected on
theoretical grounds, an exemption system is superior to the current hybrid system in terms of
several important factors: efficiency, simplicity, and the raising of tax revenue.
First, efficiency: Grubert and Mutti argue that current laws application of tax to repatriated
foreign earnings encourages wasteful and inefficient behavior on the part of corporations in
devising methods of repatriating foreign earnings without paying U.S. tax. Under an exemption
system, such wasteful planning would be unnecessary. In addition, because foreign tax credits
would no longer be applicable, cross-crediting of excess foreign tax credits would no longer
shield investment in low-tax foreign locations from U.S. tax and the artificial diversion of
technology-exploiting investment to low-tax locations would no longer occur.25 The elimination
of credits would also increase the tax on royalties, which are subject to current tax but considered
foreign-source income and thus can have their U.S. tax liability offset by excess credits.
Nevertheless, elimination of these sources of inefficiency alone would not be sufficient to make
an exemption system less wasteful than current law. If elimination of tax on repatriations were the
only feature of an exemption system, the system would likely increase inefficiency by
encouraging added investment in low-tax countries. Rather, the crucial element to an exemption
systems purported superiority is its elimination of interest and other overhead deductions for
overseas investment. The inclusion of this provision would actually result in an increase in the
average tax burden for overseas investment, thus generating an efficiency gain from an improved
allocation of investment away from low-tax overseas locations and into the domestic economy.26
An exemption system may also increase tax revenue. The Grubert and Mutti analysis concludes
that the system would generate $7.7 billion annually in added U.S. revenue.27 (Their estimate is
based on 1994 data.) More recently, the Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) estimated the revenue
gain at about $7 billion per year.28 As with the efficiency gains, however, the increase in tax
25
Harry Grubert and John Mutti, Taxing International Business Income, p. 11. Note, however, that cross-crediting also
reduces current laws inefficient disincentive to invest in high-tax countries on the part of firms without excess credits,
a feature not considered by the Grubert/Mutti analysis. Because income earned by firms with a deficit of credits
outweighs that of firms with excess credits, it is plausible that an exemption systems loss of this easing of inefficiency
would outweigh the gains from reduced investment in low-tax countries.
26
Writing more recently, Grubert and his co-author Rosanne Altshuler note that if an exemption system is actively
considered by policy makers, its adoption with its full panoply of deduction restrictions intact would be problematic.
Rosanne Altshuler and Harry Grubert, Corporate Taxes in the World Economy: Reforming the Taxation of CrossBorder Income, unpublished paper presented at the James A. Baker II Inst. for Public Policy conference on tax reform,
April 27-28, 2006, p. 4.
27
Harry Grubert and John Mutti, Taxing International Business Income, p. 38.
28
U.S. Congressional Budget Office, Reducing the Deficit: Spending and Revenue Option, Washington, D.C. March,
2011, p. 187, http://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/03-10-reducingthedeficit.pdf.
14
revenues is crucially dependent on denial of deductions for costs allocated to tax-exempt foreign
income. Without the new restrictions, an exemption system would likely reduce tax revenue.
Moreover, the JCT has significantly increased estimates of the cost of deferral, from
approximately $6 billion in 2006 to more than $80 billion in FY2014, making it more likely that
the Grubert-Mutti proposal would lose revenue.29 A loss of revenue would generally indicate that
foreign investment is favored in the aggregate.
In the area of simplicity, proponents of an exemption system emphasize its reduction in the need
for tax planning. Note, however, that tax complexityand its accompanying difficulties for tax
administrationexists when entities or activities are taxed according to different rules. Under an
exemption system, foreign subsidiary corporations would be tax exempt as under current law, and
because the exemption would be permanent rather than temporary, its import for firms tax
planners would be magnified. Accordingly, the tax systems transfer pricing rules for allocating
income among U.S. parent firms and their foreign subsidiaries would become more important;
more pressure would apply to rules that are inherently difficult to enforce. The same would be
true for the distinction between active and passive income, because active income would be
permanently exempt and passive-investment income would be taxed on a current basis. Firms
would have an even greater incentive to move from branch to subsidiary operations for start-up
firms.
In an article critical of territorial tax proposals, Kleinbard pointed out analyses by Grubert and
others that emphasized the growth in the importance of royalties as a share of repatriated earnings
for multinationals, suggesting that the exploitation of intangible assets by multinationals in
foreign locations is increasing. However, whereas the Grubert and Mutti analysis sees this as an
important reason to adopt an exemption systemcross-crediting of foreign taxes would no longer
pose an incentive to low-tax investment under an exemption systemKleinbard sees it as a
liability. The growth of intangibles, argues Kleinbard, would place enormous pressure on the
administration of transfer prices.30
Proponents of an exemption system concede that it is not perfect but argue that it is at least
superior to the highly imperfect existing system. Even this defense, however, has its
shortcomings: the most economically attractive aspects of the exemption proposal could, in
principle, be adopted piecemeal, and its most distortionary aspects could be left behind.
Specifically, more restrictive rules for deducting interest and other costs could be adopted without
exempting dividend repatriations from U.S. tax. Such plans could enhance economic efficiency
more than would the full-blown exemption systems.
More recent proposals, such as a discussion draft by the Ways and Means Committee
subsequently included in a proposal by Ways and Means Chairman Camp, subsequently
introduced as H.R. 1 in the 113th Congress,31 and a bill by Senator Enzi (S. 2091, 112th Congress),
were similar in many ways but also differ substantially from the Grubert-Mutti proposal.
29
Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT), Estimates of Federal Tax Expenditures 2006-2010, 99th Congress, April 25,
2006,JCS-2-06 2006 and Estimates Of Federal Tax Expenditures For Fiscal Years 2014-2018, 113th Congress, August
5, 2014, JCX-97-14. Tax expenditure documents are at https://www.jct.gov/publications.html?func=select&id=5.
30
Edward D. Kleinbard, Throw Territorial Taxation from the Train, Tax Notes, February 5, 2007, pp. 552-553.
31
This proposal is described in detail in JCT, Technical Explanation of the Tax Reform Act of 2014, A Discussion Draft
of the Chairman of the House Committee on Ways and Means to Reform the Internal Revenue Cost: title IV
Participation Exemption System for the Taxation of Foreign Income, JCX-15-14, February 26, 2014,
https://www.jct.gov/publications.html?func=startdown&id=4557.
15
Chairman Camps proposal had an allocation of interest rather than all deductions, and S. 2091
had no allocation of deductions. Both bills provided some relief for royalties. These proposals
also contained anti-base erosion provisions or options for limiting profit shifting whose
effectiveness is uncertain. They excluded only 95% of dividends, a provision intended to capture
some overhead costs but one that is much smaller than the full overhead costs.32
The Camp proposal and S. 2091 included provisions aimed at limiting profit shifting through
transfers of intangibles by providing a minimum tax on foreign intangible income (which also
applied to royalties). In addition, they included an allocation of interest deductions. The proposed
plans were revenue neutral in the budget horizon, but this neutrality relied on a one-time taxation
of existing accumulated earnings and thus would have lost revenue in the long run.33 This loss of
revenue suggests that both the Camp and Enzi proposals would likely have encouraged more
investment abroad. The fleshing out of a detailed territorial tax provision that might be considered
legislatively has also served to highlight one of the major concerns about moving to a territorial
tax: the possible increase in international profit shifting and tax avoidance, discussed below.34
As noted above, the Camp proposal also included a tax on prior accumulated deferred income
with a 90% exclusion for earnings not held in cash and a 75% exclusion for earnings held in cash.
The proposal also reduced the corporate tax rate to 25%, making these rates 2.5% and 6.25%.
Proportional foreign tax credits would have been allowed.
The report next examines what moving toward a residence-based system would look like in
practice.
A Residence-Based System in Practice

The capital export neutrality standard recommends a system that would be based on residence
that is, a system that taxes the income of home-country firms, regardless of where it is earned.
This section looks at the shape a residence-based system would likely take.
Current laws deferral system would be repealed under a residence-based system, and U.S.
taxation would apply on a current basis to the income of foreign subsidiaries, whether or not the
income is repatriated. If it were not for foreign taxes, deferrals repeal would move the system to
the brink of capital export neutrality (except for the portfolio investment concern): the tax burden
on foreign investment would roughly equal the tax rate on domestic investment. Foreign taxes,
however, complicate matters and make pure capital export neutrality difficult to achieve in
practice. The problem arises when a foreign host countrys tax rate exceeds the U.S. domestic tax
32
See CRS Report R42624, Moving to a Territorial Income Tax: Options and Challenges, by Jane G. Gravelle for a
more extensive discussion.
33
The international provisions in Chairman Camps draft proposal gained $68 billion in the FY2014-FY2023 if the
transition revenues are considered but lost $102 billion, or around $10 billion a year, without them. See JCT,
Estimating Revenue Effects of the Tax Reform Act of 2014, JXX-20-14, February 16, 2014, https://www.jct.gov/
publications.html?func=startdown&id=4562. Note that this estimate reflected the assumption of a 25% corporate tax
rate and would have been larger if estimated in isolation. The Enzi proposal would probably have lost more revenue
because it does not have an allocation of deductions.
34
For a discussion of international tax avoidance, see CRS Report R40623, Tax Havens: International Tax Avoidance
and Evasion, by Jane G. Gravelle. For a more detailed discussion of territorial tax proposals, see CRS Report R42624,
Moving to a Territorial Income Tax: Options and Challenges, by Jane G. Gravelle.
16
rate. In such cases, pure capital export neutrality would require an unlimited foreign tax credit.
Foreign taxes would offset U.S. taxes on domestic as well as foreign incomeonly by this
mechanism could the high foreign tax burden be brought into line with taxes on domestic
investment. Yet, as noted in the preceding section on the existing tax system, an unlimited foreign
tax credit is impractical because foreign governments could, in effect, draw on the U.S. Treasury
by raising taxes on U.S. investors ad infinitum.
Advocates of a residence-based system have in some cases called for a more restrictive form of
the foreign tax credit limitation that would place more limits on cross-crediting than does current
laws two-part limit. For example, at various times in the past, the United States has required
firms to calculate their limitation on a country-by-country basis (a per-country limitation) under
which taxes paid to one country could not be credited against U.S. tax on income from another
country.35 The Wyden-Gregg Tax Reform Act, S. 3018, introduced in the 111th Congress, would
have, in the context of a general corporate reform that broadened the base and reduced the rate,
eliminated deferral, and instituted a per-country foreign tax credit limit. A similar bill, S. 727, was
sponsored by Wyden and Coats and introduced in the 112th Congress. An alternative or additional
approach to restricting cross-crediting was implemented by the Tax Reform Act of 1986 (P.L. 99514), which, instead of requiring separate limits for each country, specified a variety of different
types of income for which separate limits (baskets) were required. The American Jobs Creation
Act of 2004 (AJCA; P.L. 108-357), however, reduced the number of separate limits to current
laws two.36 Note, however, that a more restrictive foreign tax credit limitation would not
necessarily move a residence-based system closer to pure capital export neutrality. As noted
above, cross-crediting may pose an incentive to invest in low-tax countries, but it also mitigates
the disincentive to invest in high-tax countries.
Capital export neutrality requires equal tax burdens on foreign and domestic investment. Several
features of the current system favor domestic over foreign investment, and modifying these
features would move the current system in the direction of capital export neutrality. The most
important of these is the 9% tax deduction for domestic production enacted in 2004 by AJCA.
Other tax benefits that are restricted to domestic investment include the Section 179 expensing
allowance for machines and equipment and the research and experimentation tax credit.
As noted above, Grubert and Altshuler revisited the topic of international tax reform in 2006. In
their analysis, they compared the exemption system with what they termed a burden neutral
worldwide taxation system. In constructing this latter system, they couple elimination of deferral
with a reduction in the statutory U.S. tax rate that applies to foreign earningsthus using the
added tax revenue from deferrals repeal to, in effect, purchase a cut in the tax rate. The goal of
the exchange is to not damage what they term the competitive position of U.S. multinationals.
As a consequence of the countervailing changes, the burden on investment in a range of low-tax
countries would increase; the burden of a range of income that is repatriated under current law
would fall, but the overall burden on overseas investment would be unchanged.
35
From 1954 to 1961, taxpayers were required to use a per-country limitation. For a synopsis of changes in limitation
policy, see Thomas Horst, The Overall vs. the Per-Country Limitation on the U.S. Foreign Tax Credit, in U.S.
Department of the Treasury, Office of Tax Analysis, 1978 Compendium of Tax Research (Washington: GPO, 1978),
pp. 213-214.
36
The purest form of a separate limitation would require a separate limitation to be calculated for each investment a
firm makes. Clearly, however, such a policy would present considerable administrative difficulties.
17
Grubert and Altshuler note that the overall advantage of their burden-neutral worldwide proposal
over current law depends on outcomes that are, as yet, unknown: how many firms would be in an
excess-credit position under the plan and what the burden-neutral tax rate would be. They also
caution that the plan would have another weaknessforeign countries would have an incentive to
raise their tax rates in the face of current U.S. taxation because inbound U.S. investment would be
less sensitive to the foreign rates.37 They further note that their plans reduction of tax rates at the
corporate level would shift more of the overall U.S. tax burden on corporations from the
corporate to the shareholder levela virtue in the modern world in which capital is increasingly
mobile because shareholder-level taxes are generally imposed on a residence basis and thus
achieve allocative efficiency.
A Minimum Tax Approach

In 2013, then-Chairman Baucus of the Senate Finance Committee released a discussion draft of a
proposal that taxed some foreign-source income in full and provided lower rates on others, while
retaining the foreign tax credit.38 Under the plan, income derived from activities with a U.S.
source as well as passive and mobile income (presumably similar to current Subpart F income)
would be taxed in full when earned. Other foreign-source income would also be taxed when
earned but at a rate lower than the U.S. rate. The discussion draft described two options, one in
which this income would be taxed at 80% of the U.S. rate and one in which active income would
be taxed at 60% of the U.S. rate and other income at 100%. The 80% and 60% figures were only
suggestions. Minimum tax approaches had also been suggested, without specifics, by the
President.39
A minimum tax on foreign-source income might be a compromise between moving to a territorial
system and eliminating deferral or imposing stricter rules in the context of the current system.
Another form of compromise might be requiring a percentage of income to be paid out. This type
of system would eliminate the repatriation tax because income would be taxed (at some rate)
regardless of repatriation.
The discussion draft also included provisions aimed at limiting profit shifting, including an
interest-allocation rule (similar to that of Grubert and Mutti) that would disallow deductions
associated with exempt income.
The Baucus staff proposal also included a 20% tax on prior deferred earnings with a proportional
foreign tax credit allowed.
The Presidents budget proposal for FY2016 included a minimum tax of 19% on income of
controlled foreign corporations in each country, along with a number of other revisions that had
been in prior budgets.40 A foreign tax credit equal to 85% of taxes paid with taxes assigned per
37
Rosanne Altshuler and Harry Grubert, Corporate Taxes in the World Economy: Reforming the Taxation of CrossBorder Income, p. 17.
38
Senate Finance Committee, Baucus Unveils Proposals for International Tax Reform, November 19, 2013, at
http://www.finance.senate.gov/newsroom/chairman/release/?id=f946a9f3-d296-42ad-bae4-bcf451b34b14.
39
The Presidents Framework for Business Tax Reform: A Joint Report by the White House and the Department of the
Treasury, February 2012, http://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/tax-policy/Documents/The-Presidents-Frameworkfor-Business-Tax-Reform-02-22-2012.pdf.
40
U.S. Department of Treasury, General Explanations of the Administrations Fiscal Year 2016 Revenue Proposals
(continued...)
18
country based on tax residence (not incorporation) would be allowed. The proposal also allows an
exemption from the minimum tax base for an allowance for corporate equity (ACE). This
provision allows a risk-free return on active assets invested in the country. Its purpose is to
exempt from the minimum tax return on the actual activities in the country. The proposal included
some other anti-abuse provisions (see below).
The proposal also included a 14% tax on prior deferred earnings, with a proportional foreign tax
credit.
Proposals to Restrict Deferral and Cross-Crediting

It is also possible to move toward further restrictions on deferral without eliminating it entirely.
One such proposal, contained in H.R. 3970, a tax-reform plan introduced in 2007 by Chairman
Rangel of the Ways and Means Committee, would disallow certain deductions of parent-company
costs (the most important being interest) that reflect the share of income that is deferred. This
provision, projected to raise revenue of $106 billion over 10 years, would make investment in
low-tax countries much less attractive.41 The revenue from this provision and other changes were
to be used to lower the corporate statutory tax rate.
This proposal also included a foreign tax credit pooling proposal, which would allow a share of
foreign tax credits equal to the share of income repatriated. This provision limits the ability of
firms to repatriate income from high-tax countries and use excess foreign tax credits to shield
income from low-tax countries from the foreign tax credit.
President Obama has proposed these two changes, along with others, in his various budget
outlines from 2009 through 2014.42 (The allocation of deductions, however, excluded research
and development expenditures and focused on interest deductions). In the FY2015 budget, the
deferral provision was projected to raise $5.0 billion in FY2016 and $43.8 billion over 10 years
(FY2015-FY2024), and the foreign credit pooling provision was projected to raise $6.7 billion in
FY2016 and $74.6 billion over 10 years. These provisions were not included in his FY20016
budget because that proposal included the minimum tax proposed above.
Another provision (contained in the FY2010 proposals but not in later outlines) would eliminate
check-the-box, a provision that allows firms to elect to treat subsidiaries as separate entities or
disregarded entities and permits firms to avoid current taxation on certain income that would be
subject to Subpart F anti-abuse rules (such as interest on loans from a subsidiary in a low-tax
(...continued)
(Green Book), Washington, DC, February 2015, http://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/tax-policy/Documents/
General-Explanations-FY2016.pdf.
41
The provisions of H.R. 3970 are discussed in CRS Report RL34249, The Tax Reduction and Reform Act of 2007: An
Overview, by Jane G. Gravelle. The bill also contains a provision that repeals a planned liberalization of interest
allocation rules for purposes of the foreign tax credit limit. This provision is discussed in CRS Report RL34494, The
Foreign Tax Credits Interest Allocation Rules, by Jane G. Gravelle and Donald J. Marples.
42
(Green Book), Washington, DC, March 2014, http://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/tax-policy/Documents/GeneralExplanations-FY2015-Tables.pdf. Links to all green books can be found http://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/taxpolicy/Pages/general_explanation.aspx.
19
country to a related subsidiary in a high-tax country). This provision was originally projected to
raise $86 billion over 10 years.43
A provision in the FY2015 budget proposal would treat excess income from intangibles as
Subpart F income and assign them to a separate foreign tax credit basket. This provision was
projected to raise $2.67 billion in FY2016 and $30.0 billion over 10 years.
A number of additional proposals that raised revenues on foreign-source income were included in
the earlier budget outlines and continued in the later ones, including provisions to restrict credits
for payments that are considered in the nature of royalties on extractive industries and to limit
deductions for reinsurance of insurance companies via foreign subsidiaries. The FY2015 budget
outline included some new provisions to tax under Subpart F certain income associated with
digital goods and certain sales income.
The FY2015 proposal also included a new provision to address the allocation of interest to U.S.
subsidiaries of foreign parents (replacing one to apply this interest restriction to inverted firms
that had shifted headquarters abroad),44 an issue addressing inbound rather than outbound
investment. This provision was also in the FY2016 budget. This provision was projected to raise
$2.6 billion in FY2016 and $64.2 billion over 10 years. In addition, the FY2015 and FY2016
proposals contained a provision to disallow inversions (shifting from U.S. to foreign
headquarters) by merging with a smaller company, projected to raise $0.3 billion in FY2016 and
$12.8 billion over 10 years.45
The earlier proposals included a provision that would disallow foreign tax credits when the
associated income is not received, as can occur with an arrangement termed a reverse hybrid.
This provision was adopted in 2010 (P.L. 111-226). P.L. 111-226 contained a number of
provisions directed at perceived abuses of the foreign tax credit.46
The Administration earlier presented a framework for tax reform that mentioned five elements:
the allocation of interest for deferred income, a tax on excess intangibles, a minimum tax on
foreign-source income in low-tax countries, disallowing a deduction for the cost of moving
abroad, and providing a 20% credit for costs of moving an operation from abroad to the United
States.47 All of these provisions were included in the FY2016 budget proposal.
A minimum tax on foreign-source income, as discussed above, might be a compromise between
moving to a territorial system and eliminating deferral. Another form of compromise might be
requiring a percentage of income to be paid out.
43
(Green Book), Washington, DC, May 2009, http://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/tax-policy/Documents/GeneralExplanations-FY2010.pdf.
44
Reducing taxable income in a U.S. subsidiary of a foreign firm or shifting income in general out of high-tax countries
is referred to as earnings stripping.
45
See CRS Report R43568, Corporate Expatriation, Inversions, and Mergers: Tax Issues, by Donald J. Marples and
Jane G. Gravelle for a further discussion of inversions.
46
See CRS Report R40623, Tax Havens: International Tax Avoidance and Evasion, by Jane G. Gravelle, for a
summary of enacted revisions.
47
The Presidents Framework for Business Tax Reform: A Joint Report by the White House and the Department of the
Treasury, February 2012, http://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/tax-policy/Documents/The-Presidents-Frameworkfor-Business-Tax-Reform-02-22-2012.pdf.
20
Tax Havens: Issues and Policy Options

The topic of tax havens has been a focus of recent international tax policy discussions. (This topic
is treated in more detail in another CRS report.)48 Tax havens do not fit neatly into the traditional
capital export neutrality/capital import neutrality/national neutrality evaluation framework
outlined aboveperhaps because the tax-haven issue involves as much artificial shifting of
income and investment as it does questions about how investment is actually allocated. To the
extent tax havens abet the shifting of income from its true geographic source to low-tax
jurisdictions (the havens themselves), they raise questions about protecting the U.S. Treasury
from revenue losses. They also raise questions about tax fairness (not all taxpayers are in position
to reduce their U.S. taxes by using tax havens). And to the extent tax havens reduce the tax
burden on investment that truly occurs overseas, they also raise the same questions about
economic efficiency and neutrality addressed by the traditional framework outlined above.
Tax haven is not a precisely defined term, but in most usages it refers to a countryin many cases
a small onein which nonresidents can save taxes by conducting various investments,
transactions, and activities. Attributes that make a country a successful tax haven include low or
nonexistent tax rates applicable to foreigners; strict bank and financial secrecy laws; and a highly
developed communications, financial, and legal infrastructure.
At the heart of the tax-haven issue is the discrepancy between real economic activity and what is
only apparent. Much of the economic activity that appears to occur in tax havens actually occurs
elsewhere and is only associated with particular tax-haven countries because of sometimes
spurious relationships between the person or firm conducting the activity and the tax-haven
country. Thus, for example, much (or even most) of the income reported by U.S.-controlled
subsidiaries chartered in tax havens may well have its true economic location either in some other
foreign country or in the United States itself. In several small tax-haven locations, incomes of
U.S.-controlled foreign subsidiaries are many times larger than GDP.49
In part, U.S. firms may find tax havens useful tax-saving mechanisms because of particular
aspects of the U.S. tax structure. Here, no illegal tax evasion or even transfer-price manipulation
may be necessary to obtain tax savings. An example is the technique sometimes termed a
corporate inversion reorganization, in which the overall parent of a corporate group shifts from a
U.S.-chartered entity to a foreign corporation organized in an offshore tax haven. The
rearrangement can potentially reduce or eliminate U.S. tax that would otherwise be due when
foreign income is repatriated. Although legislation has been enacted to prevent inversions that
involve simply moving the firms headquarters, a number of firms recently announced plans to
accomplish a headquarters shift by merging with a foreign firm of sufficient size (while still
retaining control of the company) to avoid the U.S. laws restrictions. The Presidents budget
proposal includes a provision addressing this issue, and legislative proposals have also been
introduced.50
48
CRS Report R40623, Tax Havens: International Tax Avoidance and Evasion, by Jane G. Gravelle.
Ibid., see Table 4.See also CRS Report R44013, Corporate Tax Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (BEPS): An
Examination of the Data, by Mark P. Keightley and Jeffrey M. Stupak, for an examination of investment flows.
50
See CRS Report R43568, Corporate Expatriation, Inversions, and Mergers: Tax Issues, by Donald J. Marples and
Jane G. Gravelle.
49
21
U.S. firms can also use tax havens to shift income out of foreign countries where there are
corporate income taxes to the zero-tax environment many tax havens offer. Short of outright tax
evasion, techniques for shifting income include manipulation of transfer prices affixed to intrafirm sales and other transfers, and the structuring of intra-firm lending and interest charges so as
to shift income out of high-tax countries to tax havens (sometimes called earnings stripping).
Transfer price manipulation can also theoretically be used to shift what is actually U.S.-source
income to offshore-tax-haven subsidiary corporations. Some of the Presidents proposals and the
Camp tax reform proposal address these issues.
Along with income shifting and expatriation by corporations, tax havens in some cases apparently
abet the outright evasion of taxes, occasionally by U.S. citizens. For example, income from illegal
activity in the United States can be shielded from U.S. authorities if a tax haven offers sufficient
bank secrecy. Or, taxes on legally generated U.S. income are apparently evaded in some cases by
depositing the income in secrecy-protected foreign bank accounts.51 The focus of this report,
however, is the activities of multinational firms, so its concern with tax havens is more with legal
(albeit what some might term abusive) income shifting rather than with outright tax evasion.
In part, the ability of firms to divert income from other foreign locations to tax havens has
implications for the real location of investment: just because a tax haven is not the true source of
income does not make the associated tax savings any less real for the underlying investment,
wherever it may be located. Interpret the effect of tax havens on actual investment in terms of the
efficiency framework outlined in previous sections of the report. First, regarding the allocation of
investment between the United States and foreign locations, existing data indicate that the United
States is a relatively high-tax country, even if tax havens are omitted from the calculation.52 Thus,
much of the income shifted to tax havens is likely shifted from countries whose taxes are lower
than U.S. taxes to begin with. As a result, it is likely that tax havens on balance magnify the
distorting effects of deferral, thus further diverting U.S. investment to foreign locations and, in
turn, reducing economic efficiency and U.S. national welfare. This efficiency effect, however,
may be mitigated by a reduction in the tax-induced distortion of location decisions across foreign
countries.53
Along with efficiency effects, tax havens reduce tax revenue collections by capital-exporting
countries. In the case of U.S. firms use of tax havens, the revenue loss can accrue both to the
United States (in the case of income shifted from domestic sources) and other countries (in the
case of income shifted from other countries with higher taxes). Tax havens likewise have the
potential to damage perceptions of tax fairness when public reports appear of large firms and
wealthy individuals using tax havens to avoid or evade substantial taxes.54 Accordingly, a policy
51
For a discussion of tax havens and illegal activities, see Martin A. Sullivan, Sex, Drugs, and Tax Evasion, Tax
Notes, June 18, 2007, pp. 1098-1100.
52
2002 IRS data on U.S.-controlled foreign subsidiaries show that subsidiaries pay, on average, a lower percentage of
their pretax earnings in tax than do firms in the United States. This is true even for developed countries such as the
United Kingdom and Canada.
53
That tax havens actually stimulate investment in nearby higher-tax countries is argued in Mihir A. Desai, C. Fritz
Foley, and James R. Hines, Jr., Do Tax Havens Divert Economic Activity? Economics Letters, vol. 90, 2006, pp.
219-224.
54
Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, for example, has observed that when tax havens are used for tax
evasion the honest American taxpayers who work hard, and do not have the ability to engage in offshore activity, are
left holding the bill. Sen. Max Baucus, Hearing Statement Regarding Offshore Tax Evasion, May 3, 2007, available as
a Finance Committee news release at http://www.finance.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/050307mb.pdf.
22
question is how tax evasion, or what might be termed abusive tax avoidance through tax havens,
can be reduced.
One possible approach to tax havens is multilateral (that is, multicountry) action. The concept
here is that tax havens flourish in part because of a lack of coordination in tax administration
between non-haven countries and that efforts to suppress tax-haven activities cannot be successful
without solidarity among non-haven countries.55 One prominent multilateral effort has been the
OECDs Project on Harmful Tax Practices, initiated in 1996. The focus of the OECDs project has
been to identify tax havens and induce them to increase their transparency (presumably reduce
secrecy about financial transactions) as well as to increase the number and scope of exchange of
tax information agreements with tax havens.56 The OECD more recently has been pursuing a
broad effort to address profit shifting referred to as Base Erosion and Profit Shifting, or BEPs. A
number of proposals have been issued.57
The Clinton Administration put forth a unilateral approach with its FY2001 budget proposal. The
basis of the plan was to be a list of jurisdictions identified by the Treasury Department as tax
havens. Foreign tax credits and the deferral benefit would be restricted for taxpayers using the
identified tax havens.58 More narrow unilateral approaches proposed in the past have primarily
involved increasing information reporting requirements.
Several legislative proposals, including proposals in President Obamas budget and a number of
congressional proposals, have been made to address evasion and avoidance. Some provisions
were adopted in the Hire Act in 2010 (P.L. 111-147).59
General Reforms of the Corporate Tax and

Implications for International Tax Treatment
Despite increasing globalization of the U.S. economy, foreign direct investment remains a small
share of the U.S.-owned capital stock. For that reason, it would perhaps not be appropriate for
international concerns to dominate the formulation of corporate tax policy. Nevertheless, specific
forms of corporate tax revisions might have important consequences for international taxation.
55
To illustrate, imagine a situation in which country A has exchange of information agreements both with country B
and tax haven H. Country B, however, has no exchange agreement with the tax haven. Conceivably, would-be
taxpayers from country A could channel tax-saving tax-haven transactions through country B.
56
Jeffrey Owens, Director, OECD Centre for Tax Policy and Administration, OECDs Work in Counteracting the Use
of Tax Havens to Evade Taxes, unpublished paper presented at the American Enterprise Institute, December 11, 2006.
Some U.S. critics of the OECD criticized what they saw as the initiatives underlying premise that low taxes are
suspect. It was indeed partly on this basis that the Bush administration persuaded the OECD to focus on transparency
and exchange of information rather than efforts to persuade targeted countries to change their tax practices toward nonresidents. See Hon. Paul ONeill, Secretary of the Treasury, testimony before the Senate Committee on Governmental
Affairs, Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, July 18, 2001, available at the committees website, at
http://hsgac.senate.gov/071801_psioneil.htm.
57
The OECDs action plan was released in 2013. See Action Plan on Base Erosion and Profit Shifting, at
http://www.oecd.org/ctp/BEPSActionPlan.pdf. Some specific proposals have been released subsequently.
58
For a description of the proposal, see U.S. Congress, JCT, Description of Revenue Proposals Contained in the
Presidents Fiscal Year 2001 Budget Proposals (Washington: GPO, 2000), pp. 500-509.
59
See CRS Report R40623, Tax Havens: International Tax Avoidance and Evasion, by Jane G. Gravelle for
descriptions.
23
Under the current U.S. system, taxes on corporate profits at the individual level (dividends and
capital gains) tend to be collected (due to tax treaties) on a residence basis. If taxes at the
individual level could be increased and taxes at the corporate level decreased, the tax would shift
toward a residence-based system without any other changes and without any additional concerns
about portfolio substitution. In 2003, relief for double taxation was provided by reducing the tax
rate on corporate dividends from the ordinary tax rate to 15% for those in brackets above the 15%
rate and to 5% for others. The 5% rate was then scheduled to fall to 0%. Capital gains, which
formerly had a top rate of 20%, were also subjected to these lower rates. These provisions expired
at the end of 2012 and were extended by the Tax Relief, Unemployment Insurance
Reauthorization, and Job Creation Act of 2010 (P.L. 111-312). With the expiration of all the 2001
and 2003 tax cuts scheduled for the end of 2012, these lower rates were made permanent by the
American Taxpayer Relief Act (P.L. 112-240), except that very high-income individuals
($450,000 of taxable income for joint returns and $400,000 for single returns), with whom much
of capital gains is concentrated, were taxed at 20% on dividends and capital gains.
The revenue estimates for keeping lower rates compared with the return to pre-2003 treatment
were $22 billion for dividends in FY2016 and $6.5 billion for capital gains.60 Based on projected
corporate revenues of $439 billion for that year,61 returning to pre-2003 law would provide
sufficient revenue to permit a 2.2 percentage point reduction in the corporate tax rate. The capital
gains portion is small because it affected only a small part of capital gains, although it is slightly
larger (by about $1 billion) than a static estimate because of scoring conventions that increase
realizations substantially with tax reductions.62
The JCTs scoring conventions limit the potential revenue to be earned from taxing capital gains
as well as dividends at ordinary rates. For example, the static estimate for revenue from capital
gains, from tax expenditure estimates, is $113 billion, but the estimate using JCTs realizations
response is only $10 billion, which would allow a reduction of a percentage point.63 If its
realizations elasticity is too large, there may be a much larger gain; for example, using an
elasticity recently used by the Congressional Budget Office to project realizations, revenue would
be $44 billion and allow an additional reduction of 3.5 percentage points, leading to a corporate
rate about 6 points lower, at 29%.64 Another possibility is to raise rates and tax corporate stock by
60
JCT, Estimated Revenue Effects Of The Revenue Provisions Contained In An Amendment In The Nature Of A
Substitute To H.R. 8, The American Taxpayer Relief Act Of 2012, 113th Congress, January 1, 2013, JCX-1-13, at
https://www.jct.gov/publications.html?func=select&id=72.
61
Congressional Budget Office, The Budget and Economic Outlook: 2014-2024, Washington DC, February 2014,
http://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/45010-Outlook2014_Feb_0.pdf.
62
See CRS Report R41364, Capital Gains Tax Options: Behavioral Responses and Revenues, by Jane G. Gravelle for
formulas to make adjustments in realizations. For example, in measuring the revenue loss from keeping part of capital
gains taxes at 15% rather than 20%, the estimate assumes larger realizations compared to the baseline, where a 20%
rate applies.
63
The $113 billion is the difference between the projected tax expenditure for lower rates on capital gains and
dividends in the JCTs tax expenditure estimates (Estimates Of Federal Tax Expenditures For Fiscal Years 2014-2018,
113th Congress, Washington, DC, August 5, 2014, JCX-97-14) and the $22 billion estimate for the cost of taxing
dividends below ordinary rates. The tax rate is assumed to rise from 20% to 37% based on the JCTs static estimate and
its implied rate change as compared to the Congressional Budget Offices baseline realizations and revenues in its
spreadsheet, found at http://www.cbo.gov/publication/45065.
64
There is some evidence that suggests the JCTs response is too large as discussed in CRS Report R41364, Capital
Gains Tax Options: Behavioral Responses and Revenues, by Jane G. Gravelle. This document also reports on the
Congressional Budget Office adjustment.
24
marking to market so individuals will be taxed on accruals whether they realize gains or not.65
Because corporate stock is probably more responsive than other sorts of assets, and because this
treatment would expand the base to include currently unrealized gains, considerable revenue
might be raised.
The corporate tax rate could also be lowered by disallowing part or all of the deduction for
interest. Current treatment, which allows a deduction for nominal interest, creates a negative
effective tax on the investments rate.66 Another revenue-raising approach would be to tax more
pass-through firms (larger partnerships and Subchapter S firms that are corporations taxed as
partnerships) at the corporate level. Also, the statutory corporate rate could be reduced by basebroadening provisions. Base broadening may lower the statutory rate but probably would not
lower the effective rate that matters for investment.67
A lower U.S. corporate tax is desirable if one believes the most serious distortion in the
international tax system is the tendency of capital to flow to low-tax foreign jurisdictions because
of deferral. Lower corporate tax rates are also responsive to concerns that portfolio substitution
disfavors U.S.-owned firms. Nevertheless, even notable reductions in the U.S. tax rate are
unlikely to have significant effects on overall U.S. output because the corporate tax is relatively
small compared with GDP. A recent estimate suggests that lowering the rate to 25% without
making any other changes would increase U.S. output by only two-tenths of 1% of GDP.68
Although international concerns should not necessarily dominate the issues surrounding corporate
tax policy,69 they do suggest the economic desirability of certain types of corporate tax reforms
that would improve economic efficiency in the international area.
Author Contact Information

Jane G. Gravelle
Senior Specialist in Economic Policy
jgravelle@crs.loc.gov, 7-7829
65
See Alan D. Viard, Moving Away From the Realization Principle, Tax Notes, November 17, 2014, pp.847-854.
See CRS Report R43432, Bonus Depreciation: Economic and Budgetary Issues, by Jane G. Gravelle for calculations.
67
See CRS Report RL34229, Corporate Tax Reform: Issues for Congress, by Jane G. Gravelle for a more extensive
discussion and estimates of how much the statutory tax rate could be reduced. Also see CRS Report R42451, Taxing
Large Pass-Throughs As Corporations: How Many Firms Would Be Affected?, by Mark P. Keightley for a discussion
of how many firms and how much profit might be affected.
68
CRS Report R41743, International Corporate Tax Rate Comparisons and Policy Implications, by Jane G. Gravelle.
69
Two reasons to provide relief at the individual level are (1) to focus tax cuts on marginal investment, which is more
likely to be taxable investment to individuals rather than investment in pension funds and retirement accounts; and (2)
to reduce the distortion that capital gains taxes impose on the willingness to realize gains and adjust assets. This latter
distortion, however, would be improved if an accrual basis capital gains tax on corporate stock were adopted. Such a
move would also raise a great deal of revenue that could be used to lower corporate tax rates. In addition, doing so
would end concerns about using corporations with lower tax rates to shelter income.
66
25
Acknowledgments
This report was originally written with David Brumbaugh.
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